Taita is an innovator and entrepreneur with a specific interest in solving challenges facing Kenya’s agriculture sector. He'll discuss what the practical solutions for giant technology advancements in IoT are to reach the base of pyramid people while ensuring sustainability and scalability are maintained and attained.

In Sub Saharan Africa, connectivity and specifically internet penetration is a constant hurdle and problem affecting over 900 million people in this continent. With internet penetration at a low of 16% (McKinley Global Institute) of the population, a huge chunk is left out and are not reaping benefits of the digitized economy. This situation is far much worse in the Agricultural sector that creates job opportunities to 75% of the population in this region. Use of outdated farming technologies have hampered the sector and even reduced involvement of the tech savvy youth who lean more towards solutions with modern internet and technology. How then do we enable the internet of things reach and benefit people who live on less than 2 pounds a day and depend entirely on agriculture to provide food and income for their families?

Taita will share lessons of building solar powered sensors with GSM Connectivity in Nairobi and customizing our solution to address the problem in our region and why working with Cambridge on our new image sensing technology builds on our vision and mission that the internet of things can and will reach the base of pyramid in sub Saharan Africa.

FW 26, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building, University of Cambridge

Cambridge Global Challenges is a Strategic Research Initiative of the University of Cambridge that aims to enhance the contribution of its research towards addressing global challenges and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.